20 Jan 2015
?Doha, 20 January 2015. It is the winter break time of the year, when many of our student athletes and their coaches leave Doha for training camps all over the world. Here is a quick overview of where our students-athletes from athletics, table tennis and squash can be found over the next few weeks.
Athletics: A large contingent of 42 including 24 members of the Athletics team from the sprints, jumps and throws disciplines depart on January 20 to return to Stellenbosch in South Africa, the site of last year’s camp. The endurance group consisting of 6 athletes and 5 staff members are holding their camp at Vilamoura in Portugal until February 7 where they can take advantage of high quality endurance running conditions. “We tried to identify the best place for each event group in order to be able to work as targeted as possible,” explains John Nuttall, Head Coach Athletics. Squash: 12 squash players, including graduate Syed Azlan Amjad (U-19), travel to Spain on February 1 where they will train for four days in Barcelona before participating in the “Spanish Junior Open” taking place in Santiago de Compostela between February 6 and 8. “This international tournament is the first one of its kind for our foundation boys and it’s important because our players have a good chance to improve their rankings and possibly gain a seeding for future tournaments,” says Squash Head Coach Stewart Boswell.
Table Tennis: The journey for Aspire’s table tennis team starts on January 21: Four boys (years 10 and 11) will train in Vienna, Austria whilst four younger student-athletes (years 8 and 9) are going to train inKöping, Sweden. The camps aim to prepare the players for the “2015 Bahrain Junior & Cadet Open”, which is an ITTF Premium Junior Circuit tournament taking place in February. “It’s an important competition where our players will represent Qatar in team, singles and doubles and performing well is important in terms of their world rankings,” explains Table Tennis Head Coach Zlatko Novakovic.